Celebrating Women at the Olympics

[JesusMaryAndJosephAndTheWeeDon]

Today Charlotte DuJardin won her sixth Olympic medal making her the most decorated female British athlete.

What is remarkable about this is that she competes in one of the few sports where men and women compete on equal terms.

Today for the individual dressage final the podium was full of women. The highest placed man was sixth. The top two horses were female too.

In the team dressage of 9 riders making up the three medal winning teams only two were men. The gold winning team was all female.

Also on the podium was the German Isabell Werth who won an incredible 11th Olympic medal from six games.

A great day for women in sport!

Feel free to add details of other female Olympians who deserve a big feminist cheer!

Anna Kiesenhofer of Austria in the women's cycling road race. She doesn't have a pro contract, she had no teammates in the race and she just rode away from the best cyclists in the World.

www.cyclingnews.com/races/olympic-games-2021/women-s-road-race/results/

Lauren Price! I don't care if she does not win gold but I bet you she will.

The BBC had the most inspiring interview and segment on her.

Brought up by her grandparents, in the valley in Wales.

Her Grandmother just came across as the most positive woman ever!

She was speaking and saying that she just knew her grand daughter was special and was doing to do something wonderful, and she sends her inspiring messages such as if you aim for the moon and miss you still land on a star.

At primary school Lauren wanted to play football nationally, win international kick boxing and go to the olympics, it seems a teacher may have laughed this off but the grandmother was like you never stop someone having dreams. Well she has done all 3 and I bet she wins gold. She switched to boxing because kick boxing isn't an olympic sport.

It was so so wonderful to see that grandmother and grandchild.

So wonderful to see Lauren Price be so confident. She looks unstoppable and I found that such a powerful thing to watch.

I honestly think after watching that I am so so so inspired to be a better parent to my sons. If I can instill an ounce of the love and support that Lauren's grandmother has given her I know my boys will do just fine in life.

Pretty much all of them tbh with you!

Just incredible strength skill work and determination.

And some things done in general I just think how the fuck. The pole vault being one :D

I've been particularly impressed with Georgia Taylor Brown in the triathlon and Simone Biles for taking her own wellbeing seriously. Also the UK women's gymnastics team. Amazing to see female gymnasts looking like they are having fun. Hopefully the days of Bela Karolyi style coaching are over. (not to mention Larry Nassar style doctoring) (I was a massive fan of Women's gymnastics in the 80s but now I look back I struggle to watch e.g. Kerri Strug vaulting while injured).

[quote andyoldlabour]Anna Kiesenhofer of Austria in the women's cycling road race. She doesn't have a pro contract, she had no teammates in the race and she just rode away from the best cyclists in the World.

www.cyclingnews.com/races/olympic-games-2021/women-s-road-race/results/[/quote]
Yes she was amazing!!! It's such a tactical team sport and I love that she just went out and cycled the fastest by herself.

I was going to say Lauren Price too, brokenzip. I loved her interview with the Duke of Cambridge and yes her grandmother was inspiring too.

I am also impressed with Helen Glover. I was watching a documentary about the London Olympics which featured an interview with her. I had not realised she had never rowed until she answered an advert looking for people who might take up rowing. She had retired after having three children but took up training again this year. She might not get a medal but that is an incredible achievement to get back up to that level of performance.

That's a good point about women's dominance dressage, JesusMaryAndJosephAndTheWeeDon. It was lovely to see Charlotte get a medal.

They are all incredible really! When you consider how much Covid impacted on their training (like Lauren doing squats using wheelie bins), it is all the more amazing.

www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/57994322

Masomah Ali Zada. And all the women on the Refugee team.

Aifric Keogh, Eimear Lambe, Fiona Murtagh, and Emily Hegarty won Ireland's first medals, taking bronze in the women's fours rowing. Sanita Puspure is also expected to do very well in the singles rowing, as is Annalise Murphy in the laser radial. Congratulations to all the remarkable women taking part in this games.

Yusra Mardini:

“We were on a dinghy that was supposed to be for vacation. Only seven people are allowed on it, but we were 20 people. Usually it’s like 10km, so it takes round about 45 minutes in these small dinghies. The boat was already broken somehow and after 15 minutes the motor stopped; it didn’t work anymore.
“My sister jumped in the water from one side, and I jumped from the other side which she wasn’t very happy about. She started screaming at me to go up to the boat even though we were both swimmers.
"After that, two guys also jumped from either side, and we tried with one hand to put it on the rope and then do kicks to stabilise the boat and so on. That took us three hours and a half until we reached the shore.”
Mardini’s journey didn’t end once she made it the island of Lesbos in Greece; that was simply the beginning. She and her family members travelled through a further seven countries before arriving in Germany where she now resides."

I understand from other articles that the journey from Greece to Germany was made on foot.

Following the great success in the Dressage, with two of our three team members being women, we are also in with a great shout in the Eventing. The 4 person team includes Laura Collet, and Piggy March who is the travelling reserve.

Laura Collet has gone through quite a bit in recent years, in 2013 (aged 22) she suffered a horrendous fall which left her in a coma for a week and, amongst other injuries, a punctured lung and lacerated spleen.

First horse inspection was this morning (basically a veterinary check for all competing horses) and all of the Team GB horses passed. The Dressage phase gets underway tomorrow with Laura scheduled to ride at 17:54 local time. The Cross-Country Phase is on Sunday with the final Showjumping phase on Monday where both Team and Individual medals being decided.

More great results for the GB women!

Bethany Shriever wins BMX gold. Bethany lost most of her funding a few years ago and has fought her way to Tokyo having crowdfunded £50,000 as well as working as a teaching assistant at a nursery.

Bryony Page won Bronze in the Women’s Trampolining, adding to her Silver from Rio.

First day of dressage for the Eventing is coming to a conclusion, with 9 more riders to go. Laura Collet is sitting in 4th place. Her team mate Oliver Townsend is currently in 1st which puts the Team in great contention for a medal. Dressage continues tomorrow then the cross-country phase is on Sunday.

Leong Mun Yee, a Malaysian diver has competed in 5 Olympics. Not won a medal at the Olympics but has won lots of others.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leong_Mun_Yee

Laura Collett was absolutely crucified when Kauto Star died. The treatment she got by the press and on social media was disgusting. I truly believe that wouldn’t have happened had she been a man

@Polkadotties totally agree. I deliberately didn’t mention it when I did a brief bio for her above as there’s always someone who will make a disparaging comment about her as a result.

Apparently 'Shriever worked part-time as a teaching assistant in a nursery at the Stephen Perse Foundation to cover some of her costs of training and travelling because UK Sport stipulated in its funding review after the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games that only male riders would be supported heading towards Tokyo 2020.' Wikipedia.

How is sport getting away with such blatant misogyny?

Ellen White has just scored two cracking goals in the Women's quarter finals.

Following the great success in the Dressage, with two of our three team members being women, we are also in with a great shout in the Eventing. The 4 person team includes Laura Collet, and Piggy March who is the travelling reserve

Ros Canter is the reserve.

I don’t know if it’s straightforward misogyny (though I’ve no doubt it played a part), but UK Sport are pretty brutal about stripping funding when sports don’t perform or don’t look to have good chances. The BBC recently did a 3-part series called Gold Rush (it’s on iPlayer) which talks about how UK sport was turned around after Team GB’s terrible results in Atlanta 1996.

Louis Smith talks about gymnastics having a massive cut in its central funding and how he’d have to try and train while toddler gymnastics groups would be taking place in the same room.

@Bryonyshcmyony

Following the great success in the Dressage, with two of our three team members being women, we are also in with a great shout in the Eventing. The 4 person team includes Laura Collet, and Piggy March who is the travelling reserve

Ros Canter is the reserve.

Oh ops, the article I read must have been out of date

@CaveMum

I don’t know if it’s straightforward misogyny (though I’ve no doubt it played a part), but UK Sport are pretty brutal about stripping funding when sports don’t perform or don’t look to have good chances. The BBC recently did a 3-part series called Gold Rush (it’s on iPlayer) which talks about how UK sport was turned around after Team GB’s terrible results in Atlanta 1996.

Louis Smith talks about gymnastics having a massive cut in its central funding and how he’d have to try and train while toddler gymnastics groups would be taking place in the same room.

Yes I don't know the finer details of the decision, but they defunded just the women's sport, which means less chance of winning, so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Luckily Shriever managed to crowdfund to support her journey to Gold, but why should she have to? If they're going to de-fund, do it to men's and women's. It's known that women and girls participate less in sport. We are half the population, so sick of being treated as less then in practically every area.

BMX gold Bethany UK! 22 yr old!

She was incredible.

Had to crowdfund to go.

Ooop sorry seen BMX already on the thread. It was so exciting!!!

I loved Beth Schriever's BMX win. After all she had to do to get there. Kye Whyte's celebration of her performance was heartwarming to watch too.

She was fucking incredible!

And it seems like such a friendly sport.

Did you see the interview afterwards some of the other women photobombing? The first was gesturing 'number 1' and pointing at her! DH said it was the silver medallist. How cool is that. Bethany glanced round and said oh so and so she's awesome! (Or similar). Really brilliant.

Bethany 💪💪💪🥂🥂